Eli Lilly's sales force finds CRM harmony in the cloud Moving pharma's IT into the cloud could save a lot of money, the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics told us a few weeks ago. Eli Lilly ($LLY) may not yet know that firsthand. But its reps do know that cloud-based systems save them a lot of aggravation. That's the word from InformationWeek, which handed Lilly an innovation award for its sales force-systems revamp. Before, reps presented sales promos on bulky Windows-based tablets that took ages to boot up while doctors stood by, waiting. After, they use a Veeva Systems ($VEEV) app on their iPads, not only for presentations, but to plan sales calls, report their results back to the office, and analyze trends, the magazine reports. Moving from multiple data systems, reporting tools, automation software--plus a panoply of customer relationship management systems around the world--has been a daunting project several years in the making. To harmonize its CRM system, Lilly ended up adopting that Veeva CRM product, hosted by Salesforce.com. For the bigger challenge of standardizing its data management, Lilly connected its many master data systems to a central data pool, and that data feeds into the Veeva CRM tool. Reps and other sales folks go about their business, taking notes on sales calls, scheduling time with doctors and so on. Another Veeva product, Veeva Network, gathers that intel and funnels it back into the data pool. That all lets reps pull up customer information in the field to tailor presentations. And it lets number-crunchers ID customers who might respond to similar marketing approaches. Lilly's U.S. sales team uses the whole shebang, while sales groups in smaller markets are migrating to Veeva Network over the next few years. Overall, some 16,000 reps are now working in the cloud, InformationWeek says. Lilly CTO Michael Meadows says there were smiles all around when the new system rolled out. Training was quick, and sales folks jumped on board. Compared with the old systems, user satisfaction improved "to a degree way higher than we had anticipated or even hoped," Meadows told the magazine. And yes, he expects to save Lilly money in the process. Millions of dollars per year, in fact, in IT costs and efficiency improvements. And with Lilly's sales force trimmed down because of the patent cliff, efficiency is obviously key.
And to think!!! During most of my career, we sold drugs just by talking to prescribers! No devices, no signatures, no funneling of info back to a cloud! God, life as a rep was so good then.....I feel sorry for all of you poor bastards who have to deal with all of this--especially at a time when you really don't have anything new to sell. "Saving millions" is meaningless when you have nothing to sell and an empty pipeline, and are preparing to lay off lots of reps.
Field to Ivory Tower........ These iPads are terrible.......they do not work with any Microsoft applications, we cannot access ePay (cannot print out our paystubs), or create any excel spreadsheets. It takes about an hour to print out a report that used to take about 15 minutes...... Thanks a lot!!!!!
The iPads are HORRIBLE! They may work accessing email and surfing the Net but using them in on a daily basis in replacement of a computer is pure craziness. iPads were not intended to be used in this manner!! Implementing iPads as the Sales Reps sole computer is yet another example that upper management is totally out of touch and does not understand the needs of their customers -- the Sales reps!!
LOL!! They finally got this in and they get an award for it. This was being put in back in 2010 and was supposed to go live Feb of 2011. The pathetic thing about this system is that they spent over $115M dollars to create a seibel solution in 2009 only to begin ripping it out in 2010. Of course price doesn't matter as long as the executives get their bonuses. Employees didn't get one or a raise but executives sure did. Then due to downsizing they fired half of the knowledge base and left it to TCS to have all of the knowledge of design and support. This also interfaced with their sales force alignment process that they just kept complicating more and more. Which by the way they took global the same year. Dumb ass of the year Manish Arora and his team get an industry award for an epic company failure, but as long as you know how to kiss ass at Eli Lilly you can miss any deadline you want. Who cares if you know what you are doing.
Wasn't it Mike Heim and the IT brain trust who cam up with this crap? No wonder the guy was shoved out he door.
Just left Lilly (non US) and haave experience from helping to launch Veeva in our affiliate, then worked nearly 18 months as a hospital specialist rep ... actually using the system myself !. My view is that the iPads were and continue to be a better solution (compared to the useless old laptops) for e-detailing (when I felt I needed that media), email on the move, internet connectivity, and irep saved some time compared to our old slow siebel !! however the move to ditch laptops completely and try to do ALL business work on an ipad.....i.e editing and creating microsoft documents .... well this is ergonomically a challenge and the solutions just aren't up to speed as an adequate replacement to using the old laptop. Suddenly the advantages of using the ipad are starting to be cancelled out by the loss of productivity of using it instead of a laptop (iPads are not laptop replacements). Anyway no longer with Lilly but feel for those left with this challenge - those that complain about this may well be challenged back and seen as a group that are not 'embracing the transformation' ! oh dear.
Just another example of how STUPID and INEPT leadership is. They don't have a clue what they are doing or what reps actually do in the field. They lie about our pipeline then can't even market the few drugs that have come out. What's their answer? Keep laying people off. 2 divisions are about to get cut in the next 6 months so be prepared. When your only answer is to continue to lay people off because of all of the horrible business decisions you have made (Amyvid, Imclone, buying more corporate jets) you realize that this company is either going bankrupt or will be merging. Hopefully merging with a company that has decent leadership even though that will mean even more layoffs. Thanks a lot JL, AA, DR etc... for running this company into the ground. Lilly will be case studied for a long time as an example of complete failure while management just kept on spending. The only fun part will be watching all these pathetic "new Lilly" managers go down with them. Taking them into offices is humiliating.
